CHASING HISTORY: OSCAR PIASTRI FIGHTS TO END AUSTRALIA’S 46-YEAR WAIT FOR AN F1 TITLE
F1 news: Piastri eyes the crown. Get the report on Alan Jones’s psychological secrets and the battle within the McLaren garage.
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Alan Jones probably wondered if his record as the last Australian Formula 1 world champion was finally under threat when Oscar Piastri took the win at Zandvoort last year. Suddenly, McLaren had a star on their hands. With nine races to go, Piastri pulled 34 points clear of Lando Norris after Norris’s car broke down at the Dutch Grand Prix. Max Verstappen was still hanging back, not looking like much of a threat, at least not yet. Almost no one thought Verstappen would end up ahead of Piastri by the time they got to Abu Dhabi.
Everyone’s been talking about McLaren’s choices between their two drivers and whether Piastri struggles more on low-grip tracks on those weekends where he lost most of his points. But if you look back, Alan Jones had a totally different mindset from the drivers you see on the grid today.
For Piastri to finally close out a title, maybe he needs to steal a page from Jones’s book. When Jones took the championship in 1980, he did things his own way.
Jones once said being a “loner” was his secret in F1. In the Drivers on Drivers book, he got pretty honest about how he kept his distance from everyone else. “I used to keep everyone at arm’s length. I never went out of my way to be mates with any of them,” he said. “I was very much a loner. I don’t know if it was out of fear or giving something away; I don’t know what it was. I’d never go down and lounge around the pool with the others in South Africa, Brazil, or Argentina. I’d just stay in my room. I was self-centred. I was there to do a job, and that was it.”
He even hated staying in the same hotel as the guys he was racing. Sometimes, he’d even change flights if there were too many other drivers on his plane. He just didn’t want to reveal anything, not even a glimpse of his personality. “I wasn’t racing against them as people; I was racing against them as things, as objects,” he said. “You’d spot a black Lotus or a red Ferrari and know who was in it, but it didn’t matter. It was just an object you had to pass.”
Now, Piastri’s situation is pretty different. These days, you can’t really hide from the world if you’re an F1 driver. Even though Piastri’s not the loudest guy on the grid, he’s built a big fanbase with his dry sense of humour; people even compare him to Kimi Raikkonen. Still, the social media era means he can’t be as private as Jones was back in the day. He’s often seen travelling to races with other drivers like George Russell and Alex Albon.
Piastri admitted recently that he’s not sure exactly what he needs to do to become a world champion. Maybe Jones’s old-school advice is the key to helping him make that final step, turning him from a contender into a champion.
FRED VASSEUR REJECTS TEAM ORDERS AS FERRARI DRIVERS DUEL CLEANLY IN SHANGHAI
Lewis Hamilton secures his first Ferrari podium at the Chinese GP as Fred Vasseur praises his drivers' clean racing.
Fred Vasseur felt pretty good about Ferrari’s performance in the Chinese Grand Prix, especially the way his drivers fought each other so cleanly, even though, as he admitted, it could’ve ended up looking like a disaster.
Ferrari started the race in third and fourth, and, right from the get-go, both drivers didn’t hold back. They actually got ahead of the Mercedes for a bit, but it didn't last; they ended up getting passed again. In those early laps, the two Ferraris were stuck between the Mercedes cars: Kimi Antonelli stretched his lead while George Russell stayed glued to their tails.
Lewis Hamilton led George Russell early on, and those two swapped places a bunch of times. Ferrari’s drivers did, too. There were moments when they went side by side, pushing the absolute limit, without ever making contact. Honestly, they kept at it almost the entire race. The last big move happened on Lap 40. Hamilton passed Leclerc and held onto third place, finally putting a red car on the podium for the first time this year.
Even with all that fighting, both Ferraris came home without a scratch. The drivers both said they had a blast; it was tough, hard racing, but always clean.
Vasseur, who runs the show at Ferrari, was quick to praise them. “Huge respect for both of them,” he told the press. “They’re total pros, and it just made sense to let them race. Sure, sometimes you risk looking stupid if things go wrong, but that’s a chance I’m willing to take.”
He was clear about his philosophy early in the season: you’ve got to let the drivers race. No team orders from the pit wall, just a chance to let them build up the team spirit by pushing each other. “This is how you make real progress,” Vasseur said. “As long as they race like they did today, I won’t freeze the positions. Even on the radio, they were telling us they were having fun.”
Once Hamilton got past Leclerc on Lap 40, the order was set. Hamilton got his first podium for Ferrari, which was huge even if his first season with them had been tough so far. Vasseur wasn’t worried, though.
“It’s so much easier the second year,” Vasseur explained. “He’s been part of the project for a while now; he started working with us as far back as mid-2025, doing simulator runs. He’s got more of a stake in this now compared to when he just turned up last January, and the car was already built. He knows everyone better, and working with the team is just smoother.”
But Vasseur knows Ferrari still has a big gap to Mercedes. The team has shown some solid pace in these first two races, but closing that gap will take time. “We’ve got to keep chipping away with those small gains, that’s how we’ll catch up.”
Right now, Ferrari’s battles out on track aren’t causing any problems. As the season goes on, though, Vasseur’s going to have to keep a lid on any tension because the championship’s heating up. Ferrari trails Mercedes by 31 points, and Leclerc and Hamilton are both chasing Russell for the drivers’ title, sitting 17 and 18 points behind.
If Ferrari’s going to have any shot at beating Mercedes, they’ll need to be on it every step of the way and stay ready to jump if their rivals make a mistake.
MCLAREN FACE RELIABILITY CRISIS AFTER LANDO NORRIS AND OSCAR PIASTRI MISS CHINESE GRAND PRIX
Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri suffer a double DNS at the Chinese GP due to Mercedes' power unit electrical failures.
McLaren’s hoping to turn things around after a rough weekend in China; both Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri couldn’t even start the race on Sunday. For Norris, it’s the first time he’s ever sat out a race since he joined F1. Piastri’s probably even more frustrated that he hasn’t managed a single lap in two races this season. He crashed on his way to the grid back in Australia, and this time, both he and Norris ran into electrical issues with the Mercedes power unit. There just wasn’t enough time to fix anything.
It’s been a long time since things went this sideways for McLaren. The last time both cars missed the start was that weird 2005 U.S. Grand Prix in Indianapolis, when only six cars raced because of the Michelin tyre fiasco.
Oscar Piastri’s still trying to wrap his head around it all. Team boss Andrea Stella summed it up, saying, "It’s tough for Oscar. He still hasn’t started a race this campaign, and you can imagine that’s not easy to handle. But honestly, the guys are keeping their heads up."
He said the team’s gone through crazier stuff. The past season was a big step forward; they developed what they call a ‘winner’s mindset’ inside the team. Last year, when McLaren bagged the double championship, Stella said their real victory wasn’t in Abu Dhabi but in Qatar and Vegas. That’s where they held it together, even when things got messy.
Remember Qatar? Piastri lost a win because the team botched the strategy. Vegas wasn’t any better; both cars got disqualified for a technical issue right after crossing the line in second and fourth.
Stella gets it; you have to tough out these moments. He thinks every setback helps build the team into real champions. He sees that attitude in Piastri, Norris, and pretty much everyone on the crew right now.
He also pointed out that the problems in China weren’t the same in both cars. It just happened that they affected the same component. Pretty lousy luck, really, and not something McLaren could control this early in the season. Stella called it ‘exceptional and uncharacteristic’ for both cars to fail at once, especially for the same part. The team’s working with Mercedes’ High Performance Powertrains to pick it apart and see what’s what. Once they dig deeper, maybe they'll find out if anything on McLaren’s side played a role. But for now, it just stings.
